Featurette

At least $11 million in bitcoin deposits have been stolen from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University.

Bitcoin is the digital world’s most popular virtual currency. In the first empirical study of its kind, SMU researchers found that hucksters use schemes that pose as legitimate web-based financial outlets to lure customers and heist deposits. Continue reading →

Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, finds a new study.

The effects persisted over a three-month period following the training, said clinical psychologist Lorelei Simpson Rowe, lead author on the pilot study from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Continue reading →

Telling women that men desire larger women who aren’t model-thin made the women feel better about their own weight in a series of new studies from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Results of the three independent studies suggest a woman’s body image is strongly linked to her perception of what she thinks men prefer, said social psychologist Andrea Meltzer, lead researcher on the study. Continue reading →

There’s nothing subtle about the story told by the rocks in northern Italy’s Sesia Valley. Evidence of ancient volcanic activity is all around, says geologist and volcanologist James Quick, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

But the full story is much less obvious, said Quick, who led an international team that in 2009 announced they had discovered a 282-million-year-old fossil supervolcano in Sesia Valley. Continue reading →